Lower Intake at Time of Southern Pacific Loan
Such was the state of affairs when Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific Railroad Company first became directly interested in the problem of river control. Early in 1905, the California Development Co., finding itself in pecuniary difficulties, applied to Mr. Julius Kruttschnitt, General Manager of the Southern Pacific, for a loan, on the alleged ground that the Imperial Valley was furnishing a great deal of traffic to the railroad, and the irrigation company was therefore warranted in asking for financial assistance. Mr. Kruttschnitt, however, declined to consider the application. The petitioners then addressed the President of the railroad company, Mr. E. H. Harriman, who, it was thought, might be induced to give the necessary aid, even though he had no personal interest in the Valley and no connection whatever with the California Development Co. Mr. Harriman, as a man of imagination and far-seeing vision, was naturally in sympathy with the bold attempt to irrigate and reclaim the arid lands of the Colorado Desert, and when the matter of the loan was presented to him, he not only gave it immediate consideration, but ordered an investigation and a report. He finally consented, against the advice of Mr. Kruttschnitt and other counsellors, to loan the Development Company $200,000, “to be used in paying off certain of its floating indebtedness and in completing and perfecting its canal system.” Inasmuch, however, as the financial management of the irrigation company had not always been judicious, Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific stipulated that they should have the right to select three of its directors, one of whom should be president, and that fifty one per cent of its stock (6300 shares) should be placed in the hands of a trustee as collateral security for the loan. This stipulation was agreed to, and on the 20th of June 1905, the Southern Pacific Company, as chief creditor, took temporary control of the California Development Company by selecting three of its directors, and by appointing as its president Mr. Epes Randolph, of Tucson, who was then acting also as president of the Harriman Lines in Arizona and Mexico.[10]
When Mr. Harriman and the Southern Pacific thus took over the management of the California Development Company, they had no intention of assuming its responsibilities, directing its engineering work, or deriving revenue from its operations. All they aimed to do was to see that the money loaned was honestly and judiciously spent. The financial management of the company, had not previously been above criticism, to say the least; and Mr. Harriman was fully justified in taking such control as might be necessary to ensure proper expenditure of the funds that the Southern Pacific Company furnished. From the representations made by the Development Company at that time, it was thought that the lower Mexican intake might be closed at a cost of not more than $20,000, and the Company proposed to use the remainder of the $200,000 loan in “completing and perfecting its canal system,” under the direction of its own technical experts. When, however, President Randolph made a personal investigation of the state of affairs, shortly after his appointment, he found the situation much more serious than the Development Company had represented it to be, and telegraphed Mr. Harriman that the Imperial Valley could not be saved by the expenditure of $200,000. To control the river, he said, under the conditions then existing, would be extremely difficult. Nobody could foresee what would be the ultimate cost of the engineering operations, but it “might easily run into three quarters of a million dollars.”
Mr. Harriman could have insisted, even then, upon a return of the unspent loan, and could have withdrawn from the financially hazardous undertaking; but instead of doing this, he telegraphed President Randolph: “Are you certain you can put the river back into the old channel?” Mr. Randolph replied: “I am certain that it can be done.” Then wired Mr. Harriman: “Go ahead and do it.”
As Chief Engineer Rockwood was thought to be familiar with the problem of river control, and quite competent to deal with it, he was allowed, at first, to take such measures for closing the intake as seemed to him best. He had made the cutting long before the Southern Pacific had anything to do with the irrigation of the Valley, and upon him, primarily, devolved the responsibility of averting consequences that might be disastrous.
Although the Mexican cutting, at that time, had virtually become a crevasse, the flow through it was not great enough to endanger the cultivated lands of the valley. The excess of water overflowed the banks of the canal—the old Alamo barranca—but it ran into the deepest part of the Sink, where it slowly accumulated without flooding anything except the works of the New Liverpool Salt Company. Civil Engineer C. E. Grunsky, of the U. S. Reclamation Service, who made an inspection of the intake three days after the loan to the California Development Company, described the situation as “not serious, but sufficiently alarming to require some attention.” The most disquieting feature of it was the steepness of the incline toward the Imperial Valley as compared with that toward the Gulf of California. The fall of the Colorado from the intake to the Gulf was only one hundred feet, while that from the intake to the bottom of the Valley was nearly four hundred feet. As the distance was about the same, either way, the Valley incline was approximately four times as steep as the riverbed incline, and if the whole stream should break through the intake and go down the steeper slope, the velocity of the current would make the stopping of it extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible. When a turbulent river, in flood, discharges at the rate of 100,000 cubic feet per second down an easily eroded and comparatively steep declivity into an immense basin four hundred feet deep, it soon gets beyond control.
The difficulty of dealing with these conditions was greatly increased by the impossibility of predicting or anticipating floods. The annual rise of the Colorado, above its junction with the Gila, begins in the spring, reaches its maximum in July, and subsides to normal about the middle of August. This period of high water is fairly regular and may be counted upon. Floods in the drainage basin of the Gila, however, are capricious, occur at all seasons of the year, and are particularly violent in the fall and winter months. “These floods,” as Mr. Cory says, “are far more to be feared and reckoned with, in preparing and conducting engineering work along the lower Colorado River, than anything coming down the Colorado River proper,” partly because they come suddenly and unexpectedly, and partly because they carry immense quantities of driftwood. During the Gila flood of November 29-30, 1905, the water at Yuma rose ten feet in ten hours, with a maximum discharge of 102,000 cubic feet per second, while driftwood almost completely covered the water surface. Such floods, coming with little or no warning, are almost irresistible.
When, in July 1905, the summer flood in the Colorado began to subside, Chief Engineer Rockwood determined to fend off the main current, and lessen the pressure on the crevasse, by means of a jetty. Just opposite the intake was a bush-overgrown island, five eighths of a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide, which split the river into two channels. Across the western channel, from the head of the island to the bank, a semi-barrier was built, of piling, barbed wire and brush. This obstruction, it was thought, might check the flow into the western channel, cause a deposit of heavy silt, and eventually create a bar which would deflect the main current around the northern end of the island and thus carry it away from the mouth of the crevasse. The attempt was only partly successful. A bar was formed, but it did not completely close the channel, nor deflect the main current. There was still an opening, about one hundred and twenty five feet in width, through which the rush of water was so great that it could not be controlled. The attempt to deflect the main current into the eastern channel, by means of a jetty, was then abandoned.
Up to this time, the Southern Pacific Company had not taken part directly in the work of river control. After the failure of the jetty, however, in August 1905, President Randolph sent his assistant, Mr. H. T. Cory,[11] to the scene of operations, with instructions to confer with Chief Engineer Rockwood and ascertain what his views and intentions were. Mr. Rockwood, at that time, did not regard the situation as at all alarming. The flow through the crevasse, he said, was doing useful work in scouring out and deepening the main canal (the old Alamo barranca) and there was little danger that the whole river would go that way. He was not in favor of closing the enlarged intake altogether, because that would shut off the water supply of the Imperial Valley and cause more damage than was then being done by the river. The deeper part of the Salton Sink, he said, was a natural drainage basin, and as it was much below the zone of cultivation in the valley as a whole, the accumulation of water in it was not likely to do a great amount of damage.
“I told him,” Mr. Cory says, “that I thought the situation was serious, even granting all he said were true; that he would better shut the break right away, for while the water might be doing good work in enlarging the canal of the California Development Company, the situation was dangerous; that it was playing with fire.”